Classic Ads.

As example, after Soviet Union fall there was new market opportunities for western companies. Russians were ready to buy new products and their choices were determined by ads. Richest and biggest companies captured the market. TV ads worked — some products has been called by brand name, like some people call each MP3 player as “iPod” — to this day most Russian people call nappies as “pampers”. Advertising is a big market driver and necessary part of any successful product. It worked well without any data collection or tracking.

Track, Convert, Repeat.

World we live today is not as simple. “Big Data” became
annoying buzz word, most of tech used to collect and analyse people’s behaviour. Company getting bigger. There’s new loyalty schemas with cards like Nectar Card and Tesco Club Card is pure not hidden tracking in which customers acquired by small portion of a sale, about 0.1% to my rough estimates earned in points which on top of all can expire.

There’s web tracking too, with cross domain cookies identifiers and whole industry of companies which entire focus on maximising conversions by any means. Facebook ads generate thousands of dollars every second. Advertisers exploiting VR and AR as well, you can get Google cardboard VR just as part of movie promotion walking on streets of London. Although advertising industry arguing no wrong doing to as the only “serve consumer interests”, we know they only serve only their own interest.

@marcoarment: If the ad industry is complaining, you know Apple made the right decisions for us. Thanks, Safari team!

Those tactics has only single goal — maximising profits by using technology while influencing peoples choices. Those companies want to use same advertisement models with invading new areas of our personal lives. Their lack of ability to change means we will find a way around their primitive “track, convert, repeat” model. Ad industry complaining about decreasing profits but instead of changing they only make thing worse by using even more ads often through mediation networks, inserting video ads, fighting content blockers.

Trust and Research as Primary Buying Factor.

My wife wanted to get me new slippers. I saw massive ad campaign all around London Tube and on the web. I knew the brand she’s going for. 5 minutes of research gave me everything I need to argue against the purchase. I found one youtuber who purchased this slippers 1 year ago and reflected on his purchase recently. Slippers broke soon because cheap materials and customer support was not up to the high price. Company invested all the profits into advertisement and almost none in the product quality and support.

Nothing stops websites to continue serve ads, but they will have to do it with respect to readers privacy, without profiling and identifying. Facebook, Amazon and Google continue to track us on their own. Not much can be done, as they deploy code from their own domains, except maybe abandoning services altogether, hence switching from Google to DuckDuckGo. However, we should make harder identify us across. Videos we watch on YouTube shouldn’t influence recommend products from Amazon, click on a search result shouldn’t make us an ad target. Safari already doing great job while blocking third party cookies by default and for 2 years supports innovative efficient and private ad blockers like 1Blocker for Macand iOS.

There’s individuals like Jhon Grubber who started first using sponsored posts in RSS, websites and podcasts with exclusive subscription model, podcasters which experience product while sponsoring it ensuring basic curation. There’s Marco Arment created his own advertising network in Overcast. This innovation is a new way for products to rich their customers and they fund independent content creators. This examples show there’s new ways for advertisement to exist without breaking trust.

I believe our economy and society are better off when individuals make conscious choices about products they purchase. Choice influenced not with massive surveillance and propaganda but trust and research. I want to leave in a world where companies compete not by sole marketing but with design, quality, customer service and environment impact. Looking into future, I want to end this by quoting a reaction comment from MacRumors.

I want to be respected as a consumer, able to make my own choices about my needs, seek them out on my own and be helped by knowledgeable people when I want information on what to purchase.